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Visit www.incrowdequity.com
Issue 4 | APRIL 2016
The
A JARGON-FREE GUIDE TO FINDING THE NEXT BIG TECHNOLOGY INVESTMENTS
More jobs for
those drones
Mechanical servants deliver
your groceries – and one
day they may mend roads
Coffee power will
soon be with us
Left-overs from the popular beverage
can heat homes and fuel buses
Company profile
E-hailing a cab
at your fingertips
Drink to this!
The beer machine
that does everything
PLUS: Cars without drivers, energy from train brakes,
ice-free surfaces, and a solar-powered holiday resort
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INTERVIEW
Taxi! You can e-hail,
it’s only a click away
People on the move just want to get from A to B more efficiently. And they like the idea of wider choice. So
what could make hailing a cab in New York a smoother experience? Mike Epley, the product management
director at Arro, believes his company’s e-hailing smartphone app fills a void in that industry. The Arro
solution is integrated with the cab, giving the driver the customer’s name and location, supplying the
customer with the driver’s identity and number, and allowing credit card payment. Epley explains from his
office in Long Island City, Queens
In a market that was already
highly competitive why was
Arro started? Uber, for example, is widely used and the company is valued at US$50bn
(£35bn, €45bn). Wasn’t the
market saturated?
We first launched Arro in New
York City in 2015 as an e-hail
app specifically for taxi fleets
and for passengers. Having an
e-hail app for the taxi sector
made perfect sense both for
passengers and for drivers. The
app benefits taxi drivers
because they now have an easier time picking up rides. And
passengers benefit from the
service and consistent pricing,
as well as having confidence
that the vehicles with which
they are traveling and their
drivers are fully licensed and
regulated by local authorities.
We have also launched Arro in
Boston and Chicago and
today we are seeing a great
deal of interest there.
So what makes Arro different?
What is its appeal? Is it the
technology?
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Arro is a convenient, affordable and safer way to e-hail a
taxi. The app has already
enjoyed great success in New
York City on everything from
the shortest wait times in the
industry to our honest, no-fee,
no-surge-pricing, no-hiddencost model. The technology is
versatile, allowing passengers
to pay with the app in the taxi
even if they have hailed the
ride the traditional way.
Arro users can call a cab with
messages sent directly through a
data terminal in front of the
driver, while an Uber driver
accepts e-hails through a smartphone on the dashboard. What
is the advantage of the Arro
method? Any examples?
Mobile Knowledge, Arro capitalizes on CMT’s in-vehicle
technology currently installed
in taxi fleets throughout
North America. Arro also
leverages CMT’s in-vehicle
GPS-based credit card processing equipment.
Incubated out of the taxi
industry payment processing
powerhouse Creative Mobile
Technologies (CMT) and
There is no surge pricing, which
means that the fare remains the
same even during peak times.
Are the drivers and Arro just
passing up a commercially reasonable opportunity?
Passengers know the exact
price they will pay from the
meter. This is the rule of
thumb in taxis across most
cities, certainly in New York
City. We believe our passengers do not want to be ripped
off – they want an affordable
and reliable taxi service in
clean, well maintained vehicles and they want to get their
taxi quickly and efficiently.
This is what Arro has to offer.
Arro was hoping to add VeriFone Systems to its methods of
payment. Is this happening and
what are the benefits?
Mike Epley: The convenient, affordable and safer way to get a cab
Arro is constantly reaching
out to potential technology
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INTERVIEW
subject title here
The familiar splurge of yellow, here on Seventh Avenue: Arro’s bosses recommend their app to be sure of service in thousands of New York taxis
partners in an effort to
improve service for our customers. Integration with the
VeriFone payment system
would improve service by
making more taxis available
on the Arro network especially
during times of peak demand.
We are continuing to explore
opportunities for integration
with VeriFone.
Has the Arro system experienced any teething problems?
What reception have you had
from the drivers of the yellow
and green cabs?
A great deal of driver training
went into launching Arro in
New York City, Chicago and
Boston. Reception from taxi
drivers has been overwhelmingly positive. Drivers understand that in order to survive
in today’s marketplace they
need to provide service that
meets or exceeds the competiAPRIL 2016 The Search
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tion. Arro gives them a way to
do that.
As a tech startup Arro is
constantly looking for ways to
improve customer service.
Every player in the ondemand ride space wants to
provide service that is fast,
convenient, reliable and professional. Taxi fleets and drivers fit this mold perfectly. But
we discovered early on that
reaching all of the drivers in a
large fleet to educate them
about Arro is a challenge. For
example, there are 50,000 taxi
drivers in the New York City
yellow fleet. We had to work
hard and get creative to reach
as many of those drivers as
possible as quickly as possible,
and the effort is ongoing.
Are you getting any feedback
from cab users?
We have had more than
100,000 downloads in New
www.incrowdequity.com
York City. Users have called it
“super-convenient” and “easy
to use.” And we have heard of
users switching over to Arro
after using other e-hail apps.
We are always trying to
improve the service by providing updates and enhancements to the app.
It is said that Arro’s biggest
rival Uber adds a premium to
fares because it guarantees a
ride. Presumably Arro does not
do this, so what guarantee does
it offer?
We are not aware of any guarantees by competitors that a
customer will always get a ride
when they ask for one – there
is no such thing as a 100% success rate. As for Arro, our large
inventory of taxis out on the
street at all times of the day or
night means our success rate
remains high even during periods of peak demand.
Every lively company looks for
ways to push back the boundaries. In terms of expansion and
technology use what is the next
move for Arro?
Arro is growing and expanding
to other cities across the United States including San Francisco and Washington, DC.
The combined CMT-Mobile
Knowledge user base includes
customer operations in more
than 150 cities and five countries. That is a large geography
for Arro to grow in. We are
also exploring car pooling
options for our passengers.
CMT is working on a pilot
program with Bandwagon that
would allow passengers to use
Arro in order to offer ride
sharing in about 6,600 of New
York City’s yellow taxis. ●
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